bugsoakcollection

[bugsoakcollection]

The sink still gurgles,

choking sounds of white water,

the angle of the toilet,

the paper rolls to the ground,

bleach cream squares folded,

the squeak of shoes,

and the biting cool tile,

the taste of you on my mouth,

and the smell of sun.

[bugsoakcollection]

His hand comes towards my mouth,

and brutal do I clench my jaw,

teeth that dig deep into flesh,

blood that blooms on tongue.

Your fingers ghost the unshaven,

and mine, in turn, thrash,

I claw and scratch at your skin,

my nails dirtied with you.

Eclipsed is the light above,

by your body crushing down,

my foot tangles between your legs,

your whimpers taste like dirt.

[bugsoakcollection]

Cold tile of an endless ceramic maze,

I feel the cool slab press into my bones,

I see where water stains have left their mark,

I taste the scent of bleach and soap,

lingering in the grooves of caulk.

There is blood dripping from somewhere inside me,

pooling bright red,

smeared and ugly,

I worry about having to scrub.

My small fingers take hold onto nothing,

my eyes unseeing and still,

braided hair falls from its lock,

the faint sound of life.

[bugsoakcollection]

You decided I was interesting.

You thought my hair was pretty.

Curl your fingers around gold strands.

You liked when I wore dresses.

The way it fell above my knees.

And you liked to make me laugh.

How faint it choked from my lungs.

And you liked to show me things,

the way my eyes would widen,

and my small fingers would tremble,

and you enjoyed me for years.

[bugsoakcollection]

Upon my skin exists brutal scars,

the evidence of your fingers in my flesh,

The blood has thickened through my limbs,

and stuck, stiff, still I shiver in the heat.

[bugsoakcollection]

The rot that lingers behind molars,

I smell it when you speak,

do you know the lingering hate?

That whispers in each exhale?

[bugsoakcollection]

Blood leaks from organs into guts,

I began smoking when I was 9.

My first drink was at 7 months old.

Thank you for the food.

I picture my bones protruding from my skin.

I picture blood soaking yellowed teeth.

I picture bruises on my inner thighs.

I began writing when I was 6.

I began drinking at 3 p.m.

I swallowed whiskey from your lips.

Pour for me heavy and strong,

let me know the taste of vomit,

like a bird I open my throat.

Like a bird I dance in the sky.

I love the winter when I freeze,

how my fingers cannot move,

I love the red of your cheeks,

I love the skin falling from your mouth into mine,

chapped corners and flaking flesh.

[bugsoakcollection]

[bugsoakcollection]

I remember the feeling of your arms around my waist.

Those wide eyes. Your dark hair. Your thin face. I remember the strength of your arms as you held me still. I remember the wet of your mouth as you whispered against my neck.

When I dream of you I awake to sweat and harsh breath. I fumble in the bed, expecting your sheets, your ceiling, your flesh. I am always shocked to come back to my own world, when only a moment ago I was lost in yours.

I loved you with all the violence in my soul. I loved you with every last inch of my immorality. I loved you like tomorrow was the last day we had.

I remember the feeling of your desire. I remember the depth of your consideration. I remember exploring grave yards and bike paths with you.

It suppresses me to reminisce on us. I wish beyond all hope of a better future with you in it. I wish, despite myself, my grief, that you could stay in my life. Your large eyes. Your dark hair. The scent of your flesh pressed close to my face.

I loved you like a terrible poem. I fear you like a screeching dog.

What a bizarre combination of sensations; an agonizing terror married with a bottomless affection. I miss your mouth. I miss your hands. I miss your laughter. Threaten to kiss me one more time? Hold the knife to my throat for one more night?

Collapsed on my body, chest flush to chest, the weight of you memorized in my bones.

I was hugged last week, and as I went to escape the clasp, they lingered a moment more. Before my eyes did blink I had thrown them off. You have ruined me. I am physically impressed with the dents of your love.

[bugsoakcollection]

Haven’t been able to write anything I’m proud of recently.

[bugsoakcollection]

Names take on a different meaning on grave stones.

I’m visiting my favorite grave. I don’t know him. He might have been a terrible person. He died when he was thirty. There are usually flowers on his grave, but I buy roses for him anyway. You once broke my heart in front of this grave. I often find myself crying in front of it. The truth is, it’s one of the only graves with a bench in front of it. That’s the only reason I got to know him and why I began to visit him. The bench doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe someone moved it. Out of habit I walk towards him. There’s a picture of him on the grave. He died in 2014, or 2015; if I knew him, I would never forget the date. This grave is filled with dead babies and grandmothers. I think about how names take on new meanings when they’re on grave stones. I think about their etched lines in stone. Here lies. Beloved. Daughter. Husband. I think about what it will look like when my name is carved into stone.

I won’t kill myself because it would destroy people. This idea plants a strange feeling in my chest that I can’t ever place. I imagine your life ruined. I imagine a lot of your lives ruined. And I imagine my name carved into stone.

[bugsoakcollection]

I have an illogical belief that if I could only retrieve this one item from you then the pit in my stomach would melt away. I know more than an object tethers us, but did it have to be this one? I want to forget you, because my anger has overtaken anything soft inside me, and I’m tired of being stiff.

[bugsoakcollection]

Crafted from hands that love,

of images tender, soft

a memory in fingers clutched,

for lonely evenings to reminisce.

Stolen from my clutches you bled,

away you went into dirt like water,

my sweet love of printed perfection.

A thousand hands have held you dear,

across the world you’ve felt their flesh,

friends and family, stranger’s need,

to tip the end into fiery bliss,

and I thought I’d lose you in poetics,

I thought you’d slip into a foe’s pocket,

or be left at an open bar in honor of our history,

but plucked you were,

palms closed around,

taken in the evening,

and lost in some assholes house.

[bugsoakcollection]

Your cruelty has expelled from every facet of you life,

I take responsibility for the oil that greased my hands,

I thought of hearing from you and remembered I am deaf,

I thought of your fingers and remembered you keep them hidden,

If I could find that gap between time,

I’d tear each edge apart to preserve,

The space between,

the before and after,

how I despise the way you treat me.

[bugsoakcollection]

I’m sitting across from a straight backed guy, hair tussled across his forehead in effortless waves, a dusty brown color that shimmers when he turns his head to the side. His lips are a round plum of pink, his cheeks bent inwards with small divots, and I could almost picture a sculptor’s thumb pressing the soft clay of his flesh to make the angles and edges of his face. His shoulders protrude from either side of his neck, a neck pale with small specks of moles and freckles, and his muscle is that of those types of men who naturally gain strength through basic athletic engagements. He’s handsome, and his electric eyes are trained on my own, where I stand a few inches to his own height. I wonder briefly if he can see the top of my head. I wonder what I must appear as from that level. He’s talking to me about something forgettable, and he’s cordial, and I can tell that in high school he would really wow me, and I would most likely blush and look away if my car were to find itself next to his in the Community Campus parking lot. But I’m not longer in high school, and I’ve met many more men, and I’ve come to realize that what once appeared special is quite replaceable, and this does weigh heavy on my heart. Some dream I fell into has been shaken like the shoulders of a seven year-old fast asleep in the back of his mother’s car, because he’s too old to be carried to bed now. It dawned on me when I came back from my first year of college, when everything that once shown and sparkled in the moonlight now lay flat and dull, meaningless and forgettable, easily replaced, hardly an effort to find. I don’t feel that he owes me anything, but as he tells me that he spends his time DJing, or rock climbing, or practicing guitar, or hanging out with friends, my mouth cracks with a dryness that only exhaustion from repetitive notions can cause. My tongue feels heavy against my bottom teeth, and suddenly he isn’t who he is before me, but the handfuls of boring people with the same hobbies, and I hold back a yawn so as to not seem impolite. And I’m now thinking of how often I have been called strange and abnormal, and how shocking of a life I live, and I ruminate on my own hobbies, and I feel some peculiar elation, despite the honest truth of such disposition actually pivoting me away from society and others, and cramming me into a corner of bizarre junk that’s always too eccentric to have more of a spoonful of.

[bugsoakcollection]

[bugsoakcollection]